If so, protect it well because social media gives your unhappy customers the ideal platform to air their grievances and if they know what their doing, you’ve potentially got a big PR problem on your hands.

What I’m referring to is an excellent story that’s doing the rounds in the world’s media this week which illustrates the power that social media savvy customers can hold over a company’s brand integrity and online reputation.

Specifically, I’m talking about the YouTube video posted by a Canadian Country and Western singer called Dave Carroll who having had his guitars smashed during loading onto a flight with the US carrier United Airlines, felt sufficiently aggrieved enough to not only write a song airing his displeasure with the airline, but commission it to video as well!

The result is the YouTube video below which went viral across the world and has accumulated over 3.7M views to date (as of writing) thus gaining the attention of the world’s main stream news channels in the process.

All this from a little known singer who is now world famous for been given really poor service by a major US airline.

Snowball Effect

If this video hadn’t gone viral on the web, perhaps United would have had a minor embarrassment on their hands; however this issue has given rise to a major unstoppable PR disaster. Whatever UA are famous for in the States, you can now bet your bottom dollar they are only famous for one thing outside it.

United Airline’s Response?

“We’ll use it for training?” Understatement I would have thought!

Here Endeth the Lesson

So what can be learned from this? Well for United I suspect it’s “get your head out of your ar…”.

For the rest of us; don’t under estimate the power of social media and its impact for the good or the bad, upon your brand and online reputation. Guard it well and make sure social media is part of your marketing and PR mix.

Here endeth the lesson!